Women and Work Collection

In 1978 the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations (University of Michigan-Wayne State University) began issuing a series of transcripts of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Twentieth Century Trade Union Women Oral History Project. Some seventy-five women who had achieved positions of leadership in their unions or in the trade union movement were interviewed for the project. Transcripts of these interviews, published under the general title "The Twentieth Century Trade Union Woman: Vehicle for Social Change," make up this collection.

A few of the interviews were prepared in cooperation with other universities conducting similar projects, among them Pennsylvania State University, the Black Women Oral History Project of the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College, the Ohio Labor History Project, the Roosevelt University Oral History Project, the Southern Oral History Program, and the University of Iowa Oral History Project. Although a wide range of industries and their respective unions were surveyed, the unions most heavily represented are the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, the Textile Workers Union, and the United Auto Workers.

The interviews, which are in the form of electrostatic copies, have been arranged alphabetically by the name of the woman interviewed; her affiliation, the name of the interviewer, and the date of the interview are indicated. An index to the interviews by union or political group is also included in this register. Four of the women interviewed - Marie Fese, Eula McGill, Julia Luna Mount, and Celia Pincus - have restricted their interviews, i.e., the transcripts may be read but permission to publish excerpts or quote from the text must be obtained from the interviewee.